Thinking Machines: Inkling vs OpenAI: GPT-5.4 Mini
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-07.
| Thinking Machines: Inkling | OpenAI: GPT-5.4 Mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | thinkingmachines | openai |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | - | 70.8 |
| Input Price | $1.00/M | $0.75/M |
| Output Price | $4.05/M | $4.50/M |
| Context Window | 524,288 | 400,000 |
| Max Output | 471,859 | 128,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | - | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | - | 66.0 |
| ai_index_agentic | - | 49.8 |
| ai_index_coding | - | 92.5 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, GPT-5.4 Mini costs $1.88 and Inkling costs $2.01, so GPT-5.4 Mini is slightly cheaper for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 524,288 and 400,000 tokens, about 786 and 600 pages.
Only Inkling offers audio input; only GPT-5.4 Mini offers structured output.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, GPT-5.4 Mini on 20 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).
Inkling was released in July 2026 and GPT-5.4 Mini in March 2026.
Pick Inkling if you need audio input; pick GPT-5.4 Mini if you need lower cost, structured output or the stronger all-round task scores.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Thinking Machines: Inkling | OpenAI: GPT-5.4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 125 | 164 |
| Code Review | 128 | 159 |
| Code Completion | 119 | 132 |
| Code Refactoring | 132 | 158 |
| Bug Fixing | 136 | 170 |
| Unit Test Generation | 116 | 148 |
| Code Documentation | 131 | 140 |
| Regex Writing | 119 | 132 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 116 | 139 |
| Frontend Component Design | 118 | 141 |
| Data Analysis | 120 | 160 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 121 | 151 |
| ETL Scripting | 124 | 149 |
| JSON Extraction | 111 | 146 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 116 | 133 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 123 | 144 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 123 | 144 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 137 | 154 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 115 | 129 |
| Blog Post Writing | 121 | 136 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →